


Look Again

by thedevilchicken



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Power Dynamics, Psychic Abilities, Seduction, Telepathic Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-29 03:56:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Anderson being assigned to Lex instead of Dredd changes everything.





	Look Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alamorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/gifts).



She was almost a judge once. It's a thought that stays with her. 

She didn't know what Lex was going to do until he did it because he didn't know it, either; by the time he did know, and so she did, it was much too late for it to make a difference. He sold her to MaMa, or at the very least he sold his silence when MaMa took her prisoner and decided not to let her go. It amounted to the same thing in the end: he covered up her disappearance, made it look like she'd just run away to avoid failure, and MaMa kept her there in Peach Trees.

"Let me guess," Cassandra said, on the second day. She still felt almost cocky then, like someone might still come for her, like she might have had the upper hand. They'd left her in her uniform, after all, like it meant something, and the looks on the faces of the ones who brought her food said it did. "If I do what you say, you won't hurt me." 

"Something like that," MaMa replied, and she looked at her as she smiled a smile that almost but not quite reached her eyes, then she walked away again and left her there. Cassandra didn't need to see inside her captor's head to understand right then that nobody was coming for her. Nobody knew she was there because Lex sure as hell didn't count and the best that she could hope for was she'd live, but she knew she'd never tell the tale. MaMa had left her in the uniform because it meant less than nothing, at least to her.

Her first job was finding an informant in their midst who'd been working for another gang. They gave her a change of clothes more out of hygiene than assimilation, then cuffed her to a table and brought in suspects one by one for her to read. Kay beat them while she watched, not that that helped move things along at all, but he seemed to like it for the effect he thought it had on her. Why he thought she'd care was more or less beyond her because all that did was teach the ones who hadn't done it just how little they could trust him. Needless to say, she didn't try to explain. He wouldn't have listened and she didn't want him to.

She found the informant on the third day and could've done it sooner if she'd tried to. She turned him in to MaMa on the fourth day, once she'd realized just how much she lacked incentive to protect him given all the things he'd done. She watched MaMa push him, quite calmly, from the balcony on the 200th floor. She didn't watch the fall, but then again she didn't expect she'd see much from so high.

"How did you know I wasn't lying?" she asked after, as they stood leaning at the railing with their backs turned to it, side by side. 

"Were you?"

"No." 

"Did you think about it?"

"Yes."

MaMa patted her cheek with one scraped, bruised hand. He'd put up a fight, but not much of one. 

"That's how I knew," she said. 

"And if I'd said it was Kay?"

"Then he'd be the stain on the sidewalk right now." 

"As simple as that? My word over his?"

MaMa looked her in the eye. MaMa tilted her head. "If I can't trust you," she said, "then what's the point in me having you?"

Cassandra supposed that made a perverse kind of sense. 

From what she could tell, business carried on as usual over the weeks and months that followed her arrival. They kept her in a sparse, locked room on floor 198, with a window made of thick ballistic glass she couldn't break out of that let in the neon glow of the _Peach Trees_ sign, all day and night, every day, every night. When they needed her assistance, Kay came in to fetch her where she needed to go. She pointed out traitors. She vetted new lieutenants. She sat in on deals, in the corner at first, but then, one day, she was shown to the seat at MaMa's side. Two months was a long time in the designer drug trade, after all, and she'd never refused to do her designated job. She couldn't see a reason to, all things considered.

"How much did you pay for me?" she asked, after, when the others were gone. 

"Three hundred thousand," MaMa said. 

She turned her back and shrugged off her shirt but that wasn't out of any kind of modesty; she was heading toward the bathtub and she glanced back over one shoulder, as she kicked off her shoes and pushed her pants over her hips. In spite of everything she'd ever seen inside another person's head, Cassandra blushed. It was only half because of the nakedness. In a clear, bright flash, she knew she'd paid five.

"Tell me what I'm thinking," MaMa said, as she bent to turn on the water. "Show me what you're worth."

"I--"

She turned again. She sat down, perched on the rim of the tub. 

"I won't ask again," she said. 

So, Cassandra closed her eyes and looked into MaMa's head. 

She wishes she could say Madeline Madrigal's mind is unlike any other that she's ever known, but it's not. The Hall of Justice had tested her before that day, again and again, rigorously, put her in rooms with all kinds of perps, and besides that, half of everyone she's ever met or ever meets has thoughts she wouldn't want to say out loud. MaMa's mind is no different, not fundamentally, but Cassandra expected sex inside her head and didn't find it there. She found something else instead: something almost like an empire, a dozen blocks or more all living under MaMa's rule, the gang wars won they way they'd been in Peach Trees. She found herself at her right hand, and found she'd didn't actually object to that. Not the way she'd thought she might, at least. Maybe all it was was just a different way to keep the peace.

"Are you with me?" MaMa asked, her back to her as she stepped into the tub. Cassandra expected to be flooded with _or else_ , like a gun pressed tight to the base of her skull, a knife from behind at her throat or her thigh. But there was no threat; all she saw was her room lit up with the buzz and blink of neon lights. The difference was small: it was the presence or absence of a lock on the door.

"I won't ask again," MaMa said, like she meant it. 

"Yes," Cassandra said, like she meant it too.

MaMa smiled from the tub, naked underneath the rippled water. It almost seemed to reach her eyes, if vicious at the edges. And Cassandra, contrary as ever, felt herself get wet. She left the room, and MaMa let her go.

That night, she realized something: the bed that she'd been given sits directly under MaMa's, two floors down. That night, she realized something else: she could see into MaMa's head from there, with a little concentration. When MaMa spread her legs and raked her nails against her skin, Cassandra was there with her. When she pushed two fingers in between her thighs, when she fucked herself, hips rocking, her back arched, Cassandra almost felt it, too. She didn't even have to touch herself to get there. She came when MaMa did. 

The next night, MaMa did it again, face down against her pillows, shoving her cunt up against her hand. The next night, she did it again, on her knees with her fingertips rubbing at her clit. The next night, Cassandra was prepared; she slipped naked into bed and waited for the thoughts to come, and when they did, she slipped inside them. MaMa imagined her naked, so she was. MaMa imagined her slick against her fingers and full up with a big, thick toy that made her gasp and buck against it. MaMa straddled her thighs and rubbed herself against the base of it, grinding against it, pushing it deeper, till Cassandra came just like that. 

It happened again the next night and the next, the next, again and again, again. MaMa bent her down and fucked her from behind with a long, broad strap-on that made her pant and groan and ache until she came again. She spanked her cunt till her fingers came back slick with her arousal. She fucked her with her fingers till she came in moaning shudders, wracked with it. And afterwards, Cassandra rubbed her clit until she came again. Until tonight, they never even touched. Until tonight, Cassandra's acted just like it's never happened. Until tonight, she thought that was for the best. 

Tonight, MaMa offered her her bathtub, and when Cassandra stripped to enter it, she didn't leave the room. She took a seat in a high-backed chair and watched her taking off her clothes, tapping her fingertips thoughtfully against her lips. When Cassandra stepped naked into the steaming tub, MaMa rose and walked across the room. She sat on the rim of the tub and Cassandra watched her lean, and test the water with one hand. She watched her reaching lower, watched her fingertips trace the line of her slit and felt her insides tighten with it. When she shifted her legs wider, when MaMa's fingers opened up her cunt, she felt the heat of the bathwater against her, closer. It made her throb. She wanted more. 

She coaxed her up and out from the tub, had her lean against the side as she went down onto her knees. MaMa licked her, one long lap of the flat of her tongue against the place that her folds met, then she parted them with both her thumbs to tease a slow, hot circle all around her clit. Cassandra gasped, her fingers going tight in MaMa's hair. Then MaMa stood, and led her to the bed. She didn't seem to give a damn about the telltale trail of wet footprints on the floor, or the pattern that her body left against the sheets. She made her come with impunity, but then nothing MaMa does is ever punished. 

She made her come, then teased her till she came again, then stretched out on her back, self-satisfied. And now, bright as an incandescent, neon sign, she sees it in her, a thing she knows she should have seen before. 

"You knew all along," she says, and MaMa smiles at that, in the low bedroom light. The smile's right there in her eyes and it's like in this moment if in no other, she's no longer cold and gray inside. For now, Cassandra doesn't even care that she's been had. As she pushes up to straddle MaMa's hips, exhilarated by the thought she's somehow hidden this till now, she doesn't even care that this is how she'll be controlled. She doesn't care that sex to her is like MaMa's thumbs in their technician's eyes. She doesn't need a knife against her skin to be compliant.

No one in Peach Trees questions Cassandra's authority, because that authority derives from MaMa herself. No one disbelieves what she can do, because she's proved it time and time again. When Kay comes sniffing round her door, she slips inside his head and makes him regret it. And when MaMa calls, she comes. These days, she passes judgment of a different kind. It doesn't always feel much different, and she wonders if it should.

She was almost a judge once, she thinks, as she rides MaMa's fingers, as she fingers her own clit. She gasps and she writhes and MaMa watches her, rapt, like she's slo-mo flowing in her veins. Maybe they're not equals, but maybe they don't have to be.

She was almost a judge once, she thinks. Now look at her.


End file.
